key points intent

3.12. Key points: Intent — Transcript (English)

Summary:

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Transcript

Welcome to this Keypoint lesson where we are going to talk about the keypoints related to the intent focus.

In the previous theoretical lesson, we talked about how we can use muscular contractions to work on increasing flexibility.

And so right now we’re going to see what exactly we need to do to engage the muscles in this way.

As usual, when we work with forms with flexion, extension, flexion dynamics, we start in a recline in transition.

So what we’ll do here is that we open the legs a little bit wider than he puts apart.

Also you don’t want the top of the feet to open like this because again it makes it easier to perform the movement, but you want the top of the foot to look up.

Make sure that the top of the foot is looking up all the time. extend the ankles, you push the ball of the foot and you slowly lower the legs on the floor.

See the legs are very active.

Then one arm forward, the other arm forward, we’re leaning back.

So see we have complete Distributed Activation here.

The knee is extended, ankles extended, pushing the balls of the feet, drawing the shoulders down, pressing forward, the entire body is working.

Also, even though the knee is extended, it’s not bent as you can see, you still want to continue doing the movement of extending the knee even though it’s already extended, but you want to keep your muscles active as you do that.

Also, think about this.

So, essentially, if we want to work on flexibility here, we want to bring the pelvis from this position to this position, right?

And at some point, as the pelvis goes to a certain position, we’ll start having here tension in the hamstrings.

But at this position, your pelvis is hanging on your hip flexors, which are here between the leg and the pelvis.

If you were to relax your hip muscles, your pelvis is going to drop like this, right?

So in a way, what your hip flexors here are doing, you want them to continue doing that as you go in, in, in, in like that.

So one of the most important things here is that you want to keep this engagement between the leg and the pelvis when we start going into the flexion, extension, flexion dynamic.

So especially for the intent focus, the Distributed Activation, uninterrupted Distributed Activation is very, very important.

You cannot just engage the legs and you forget about the legs and you do something with the upper body, you forget about that, then the legs.

You really have to keep the entire body active all the time if you want to work on the intent focus.

Okay, so the legs stay active.

So we create distributed activation and then we begin to roll in and we discuss this movement many times.

We keep the legs engaged.

At no point we lose the activation.

Also look at the leg movements here.

At some point you will see kind of micro movements in the legs.

See, so I’m trying to extend the legs even more and also as I extend the legs I’m trying to press the legs into the floor.

And if you think about it, so imagine if from this position we really press the floor with the legs, what the movement is trying to do is that it’s trying to kind of throw pelvis back like this, right?

But at the same time, the pelvis in this position.

So while we’re trying to do this movement, we’re doing another opposing movement, which is trying to do this, right?

So we have opposing movements fighting for the same muscles, but it is very intentional.

And this is one of the keys to finding ways to overwrite automatic movement patterns.

So pressing the back of the leg into the floor, keeping the upper body active during the shoulders down.

So the upper body is doing some micro movements here that’s related to the inflect focus and also just micro movements to release tension.

But the legs stay active, the legs stay active and we begin to extend the spine.

And again we find this absolutely straight upper body position.

So here I’m showing that maybe you’re gonna be more upright.

Now, some people may even come into this position.

If at any point you come to 90 degrees or even more than 90 degrees, what you have to do is start the hands, which for me they’re on the front of my hips.

But if you’re 90 or more, you will have to bring the hands behind and you have to press them into the floor so that you can support your pelvis to be more upright.

And again, So the legs are engaged and you’re moving with the upper body trying to ease in into the movement.

You’re exploring the Distributed Activation.

I cannot overemphasize how important it is to keep the upper body activation in order to sustain the entire body’s Distributed Activation in order to find a way to control the muscles to basically come closer to state 2 as discussed in the previous listen.

Even though it may seem that drawing the shoulders down has nothing to do with your hips, but it really helps with Distributed Activation.

And you don’t think that we’re working on the flexibility of the hamstrings.

This is the intent focus.

What we’re doing is that in a way we have this kind of peak pattern, and we’re just trying to make it more sharp.

This is what we do.

And in this dynamic, the integrity of this upper part is very, very important.

So again, we don’t think about this movement dynamic as working on flexibility, we think about it as working on control.

We want to control our muscles in a certain way.

But again, as I said in the previous lesson, remember, you don’t want to go kind of as deep as you can, because then you’re going to have of the delayed onset muscle soreness and that’s not very pleasant.

So and then when we exit, we round the spine, we lean back, the legs become light, they come off the floor, we balance, we return to reclining transition.

So these are the key points.

In the next lesson, you’re going to perform this form with the legs wide and then immediately after you will perform a form with the legs together, which is a little bit more challenging in terms of flexibility.

Right?

So remember, if when your spine extends, it’s more than 90 or 90, you have to bring the hands behind.

Also, if you add height under your pelvis, this may allow you to go just over 90 degrees.

And that means that the gravity is not fighting against you, but it starts to help you.

It does make a very difference.

So that is also a perfectly acceptable way to perform these forms when we work on the intent focus.

So it’s less important for inflect, but for intent it’s quite important.

So let’s try it in the next practice lesson.